Philosophical and Literary
by MorticiaYouSpokeFrench
Summary: "In a world too often governed by corruption and arrogance, it can be difficult to stay true to one's philosophical and literary principles." is a phrase which here means: Lemony Snicket lied about the deaths of Jacques Snicket and Olivia Caliban in order to protect them.


**I thought that there would be no way for the Series of Unfortunate Events TV series to break my heart, since I already knew all the bad things that happened in advance. What I didn't count on, though, was them making me care so much for these two characters, and then breaking my heart anew when they got killed off.**

**Joke's on them, though, because I have fanfiction, and I say there _are_ happy endings!**

* * *

**Philosophical and Literary**

In a world too often governed by corruption and arrogance, it can be difficult to stay true to one's philosophical and literary principles. Literary principles are the principles one holds regarding the ethics of both reading and writing literature, whether fictional or, in this case, non-fictional. For example, one of my literary principles is that there is a covenant of trust between an author and a reader. An author must never surprise a reader with an unhappy ending without warning their readers in advance to look away, and an author must never betray the trust of their readers by lying when they are telling a story they proclaim to be true.

Philosophical principles are the principles one holds regarding the wider world and how one should live their lives in it. For example, it is my philosophical principle that when there are two people who are brave and kind and true, one must do anything in one's power to protect them. Especially if one of those people is one's own brother, and the other is the woman he loves.

My name is Lemony Snicket, and when faced with a choice between my literary principles and my philosophical ones, I chose to break the trust of my dear readers and lie to them about certain events regarding the deaths of both Jacques Snicket and Olivia Caliban. The knowledge of what I have done weighs heavily on me. The readers (which I hope are few) of my horrible account regarding the travails of the Baudelaires could only have kept reading such a tragic story out of kind-hearted concern for those innocent children, and the thought of the grief they must have felt, the endless tears they must have cried over the deaths of Jacques and Olivia, has kept me up at nights myself, crying bitter tears along with them.

Therefore, now that the danger has passed, it is my pleasure to present to you a short account of an event which was not at all unfortunate. Namely, the reunion of two people in love.

* * *

Jacques Snicket was in the very unfortunate situation of being tied to a chair and subjected to an interrogation.

"Come Mr. Snicket," said a heavy-set man wearing a black suit, while leaning over him menacingly, "Don't be a fool. If you will cooperate with me, I assure you that you will be quite richly compensated. If, however, you continue to be stubborn-" he gestured towards a masked woman who was busy laying out surgical tools on a table behind him, "-we can have you begging for death in short order. And we will not be merciful enough to give it to you quickly."

"You will have to try harder if you wish to intimidate me," Jacques replied, "I have been more intimidated during casual chats with a man who had no hair (though, admittedly, he did have a magnificent beard). Besides, I refuse to be intimidated by a man who wears sunglasses despite being indoors."

"Mr. Snicket, do you know what governments around the world would offer for just a small sample of the medusoid mycelium? Are you really satisfied making a living by driving a taxi around all day? Think what we could offer you!"

Jacques began to whistle a melancholy old tune as he stared at the ceiling, ignoring the man in front of him.

"This is your last chance, Mr. Snicket, before I let my colleague begin with her less-than-pleasant methods of persuasion. Since first catching wind of the existence of the fungus, we have been tracking your secret organization for months, trying to get our hands on some concrete information, and we are getting quite impatient. Come now, you can either give us the information we want, or you can be slowly tortured to death."

"I've been in worse scrapes than this one," replied Jacques, allowing his mind to drift to another time he had uttered those words in a village of fowl devotees.

The man snarled, but before he could retort, the ringing of his phone interrupted him.

"I'm in the middle of an interrogation!" he snapped, but a second later an ugly smile crept over his face. "Yes? Where? Yes. Bring her to the interrogation room immediately!"

He turned to Jacques. "I see now. You were counting on your little associate to break you out. Well, I have bad news for you: My people just captured her. It seems I've landed myself two VFD members today!"

Jacques stiffened in surprise. There should not have been anyone outside trying to rescue him. He had told no one from VFD where he was or that he was in trouble. Since what had happened to Olivia, he had lost his taste for sharing his missions with others. If something went wrong, he wanted it to be on his head only, he refused to endanger any more noble and innocent people. So how had someone known to come for him here? And who was it?

The man in a black suit laughed. "I see from your response that I've hit the mark. Your friend cannot save you now, Mr. Snicket."

The door opened, and two more suited men came in, gripping their prisoner with her hands cuffed behind her back. If Jacques had been surprised to hear that a VFD member had tried to rescue him, it was nothing to the shock of discovering who that member was. For a moment he felt as if he had forgotten how to breathe. Then, the breath came back to him, and so did all the sunlight and beauty in the world, that he had not noticed had been missing until that moment.

"Olivia Caliban," he murmured, staring into the eyes he thought he would never see again.

"Jacques Snicket," she replied, smiling at him softly, and much was communicated with that simple exchange.

"Put her on a chair next to him and tie her down," the suited man instructed his henchmen. "And position them so that they have a good view of each other. I want him to see every single cut, bruise, and break she endures with complete clarity."

For the first time since he had been captured, Jacques felt a chill of fear. Olivia, however, merely smiled at him reassuringly, and he felt himself relaxing back into his chair, knowing he could trust in her to have the situation under control.

Once she was situated as instructed, the suited man turned to her. "Now my dear, perhaps you will prove a little more talkative than your friend over there. I certainly hope so, for your own sake."

"As this is not a library, which requires silence, you may indeed find me talkative," she replied in her bright manner, that always made one want to smile at her when she spoke.

"Very good," the suited man replied, "let's start with something easy: Can you tell me what the initials V.F.D. stand for?"

"Certainly," said Olivia helpfully. She indicated Jacques with her head. "It stands for his Very Fine Derriere."

"Are you sure, Darling?" asked Jacques, "I could have sworn it stood for _your_ Very Fetching Décolletage."

"Ah!" she said with satisfaction, "And you didn't even see me in my Madame Lulu getup!"

"I'm sorry to have missed it," he replied. And then added meaningfully: "For more than one reason."

"Enough of this!" snapped the suited man, slamming the table of surgical devices, and making them both startle. "Do neither of you realize the position you're in? Is everyone in your organization a fool?"

"Would a fool know the central theme of the book Anna Karenina?" asked Jacques. The subject of the correlation between formal education and intelligence is a very interesting one, and there is much to be said on the matter. Unfortunately, the suited man seemed uninterested in discussing it, for he grabbed a knife from the table and held it to Olivia's throat. "I could kill you right now," he snarled in her ear, and she wrinkled her nose as his cologne burned her nostrils, "why aren't you scared?"

"Because," Olivia replied calmly, with all the patience of a librarian explaining the Dewey Decimal System to a toddler, "I'm exactly where I want to be." And with a press of her toes, a spring mechanism was triggered, and a pair of blades sprang out of the heals of her shoes. A small but well-aimed kick resulted in one of the blades becoming lodged in the suited man's thigh.

What followed were a few minutes of confusion, during which Olivia demonstrated once again her skills with a lasso, Jacques broke a chair over a henchperson's head and suffered a few splinters as a result, and the man in the suit was heard to utter quite a few words which I would not feel comfortable defining for you. The final result, though, was that anyone in the room who was not a member of VFD was tied up on the floor, while Jacques and Olivia stood panting above them.

"Are you injured?" Olivia asked.

"At least two splinters in my hand. You?"

Olivia grimaced. "A wedgie. These clothes are too tight."

It was decided that as they were not urgent, attending to both their injuries could wait until they escaped from the facility.

Far too much time passed until they were out of danger and capable of speaking leisurely with each other, and even then they spent a good long hour engaging in kissing and heavy petting, so that it was quite a while later when the time for talking finally came.

"How did you survive falling into the lion pit? I interviewed several eyewitnesses, and they all gave me the same account."

"Those poor beasts. I'd snuck in the evening before to feed them, hoping that if their hunger was sated whatever poor person would be pushed in would be spared. I had defrosted whatever meat was in the freezer over night, and had hidden it under my clothes, intending to leave them as much food as possible before my escape. Olaf caught the children and me on our way out, though, and you know the rest.

"Once I fell into the pit, the lions went straight for the meat they could smell on me, but they didn't harm me. They're very intelligent beasts, you know, I believe they had once been trained, but had gone feral with hunger. Anyways, the way they were standing over me must have obscured most of what happened from view, and I suppose all the people saw were the lions consuming bloody bits of meat with some torn remnants of my dress attached, because no one seemed to question the fact that I had been killed.

"The fire broke out soon after, and in the panic to escape the tent, no one paid very close attention to the pit. I climbed out of the pit with the help of a beam that had fallen in in the pandemonium and made it to safety without being spotted by any of the villains."

"You're a very clever and wonderful woman," Jacques said fondly, "Though I wish I had known earlier, it would have saved me much grief and heartache."

"You have no one but yourself to blame for that, Jacques Snicket," Olivia replied, "The minute I got the message from that the children were safe and in good hands with Captain Widdershins, I set out to find you. No one knew where you were, though, and you are a hard man to track."

Jacques put his arm around her. "You did find me my dear, and I am very impressed. Now, I suppose you would like to hear how I faked my death?"

Olivia shook her head. "Soon after taking the taxi, I found the VFD-issued 'How to Fake Your Death' kit. The fake blood packets were missing. It was no stretch to figure out what your backup plan was."

He considered this new information solemnly. "Then there is only one matter left to rectify."

"And what matter is that?"

Jacques leaned towards her, stroking her hair. "I agonized, Olivia, over the grief I caused you by making you think I was dead. Having found out you are alive, I thought you must forgive me for it, since now that I had suffered the same agony I caused you, the accounts are even. Now, though, I have found that you never thought me dead, and never suffered the anguish I did. Therefore, I believe you are quite in my debt, for I suffered enormously."

Olivia smiled up at him. "What can I do, Jacques Snicket, to make you forgive me, to compensate for the suffering I caused you? What do you want?"

He pulled her closer by her belt loops, until they were standing as close as two people could. "Your nearness. I want you besides me for as long as it was I thought you were dead. A day of your nearness for each day that I suffered."

"And how many days does that amount to?" Olivia asked.

"Well, you see, my dear, the problem is that I have never been very good at math. Now, according to my calculations, if we begin counting this very day, you will need to stay by my side until the day I turn 120. Tell me, I am never quite sure, does that calculation sound about right to you?"

"It sounds exactly right, Jacques Snicket," she replied, though she was never any good at mathematics either. "Full marks."


End file.
